Quest Diagnostics Discloses Unauthorized Access to Patient Data
The medical laboratory giant confirmed that personal and health records were accessed following a cyber intrusion targeting its testing platform.
By Imani Donovan ·
Patients of Quest Diagnostics may have had sensitive medical information exposed following a cyberattack on the company’s systems. The medical laboratory firm disclosed the incident in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, stating that unauthorized access occurred on Wednesday affecting one of its primary platforms. The breach potentially impacts personal health records and associated data, though the specific number of affected individuals remains undetermined.
The compromised system, identified as Quanum, serves as a portal for medical practices, hospitals, and healthcare organizations to request laboratory tests while managing billing operations. Quest stated that the intrusion allowed for the accessing of “certain patient records.” The company has notified law enforcement and launched an investigation into the matter. A spokesperson for the firm declined to comment further, referring inquiries to a security notice posted on its website.
The security notice confirms that protected health information, including personal data and patient records, was taken. However, the firm is still determining the specific categories of data involved. The company has not provided a timeline for when the breach began or disclosed whether any ransom demands have been received. Additionally, Quest has not specified the quantity of healthcare providers or patient records compromised.
Quanum is utilized by approximately 500,000 clinicians across thousands of locations throughout North America. While the volume of records held by the system is not publicly listed, Quest materials indicate that a single health system with over 6 million patients can generate hundreds of millions of documents and charts. The incident marks the second major breach for the company in the past decade, following a 2019 cyberattack that resulted in the loss of 11.9 million patient records via a third-party billing provider.
The attack on Quest is the latest in a series of cyber incidents affecting the healthcare sector this year. Health technology companies have become primary targets for criminal actors seeking to steal sensitive data for ransom. Previous breaches have occurred at medical implant manufacturer Boston Scientific, which forced its network offline for weeks in August, and medical tech maker Stryker, which experienced a mass-wiping of employee devices in March.
Other healthcare entities hit by data breaches this year include medical recordkeeping company CareCloud, Scotland-based health tech provider Craneware, and U.S. pharmaceutical distribution giant McKesson. Quest is currently investigating the scope of its own incident to determine the extent of the data taken from its Quanum systems.
Source: TechCrunch · original report published
